The subject invention relates to a method for printing tickets at remote locations and, more particularly, to printing readable tickets at remote locations.
Tickets such as concert, theater, movie, museum, trade show, airline and sports tickets, etc, are documents having a substantial, intrinsic value which typically may be presented by any bearer to gain admittance or exercise an entitlement. Since such tickets may have substantial cash value, there exists a continuing problem of preventing the issuance of fraudulent tickets.
The issuance of many types of tickets, such as theater tickets, is currently controlled by means of controlled supplies (e.g. serialized ticket stock, specially printed ticket stock, etc.) and by allowing tickets to be issued only by controlled, authorized issuers (e.g. ticket agents). Controlled supplies are expensive, difficult to control, and prone to theft or counterfeiting. Typically, one stood in line to purchase a ticket at the place the event was being held or purchased the ticket over the phone from an authorized ticket agent who mailed the ticket to the purchaser.
Currently, ticketing companies are giving purchasers the option of printing their electronic tickets at home, using ordinary paper, a personal computer printer and an Internet connection. One of the problems in enabling people to print tickets at home is to ensure that counterfeit tickets are not used.
Another problem is to automatically check that the tickets are genuine.
This invention overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art by creating an automatic method for reading a graphic field on a ticket so that the ticket may be processed quickly without human error. The graphic field is designed to produce a xe2x80x9ctellxe2x80x9d, a visible known image (a large number of detectable halftone gray steps) when printed by a personal computer printer. Additionally, the graphic field will change in appearance when the ticket originally printed by the personal computer printer is digitally reproduced by either scanning or photocopying.
The digital scanning and photocopying processes are degrading process that reduce the number of detectable half-tone gray steps produced in the copy. These processes also give rise to a pronounced mottle at the transition zone from white to black that does not exist in the original printed electronic ticket. The loss of some of the gray steps in the graphic field will indicate to a automated evaluation process that the reproduced ticket is counterfeit.